1 - Powder bed fusion processes: main classes of alloys, current status, and technological trends

Abstract

Metal powder-based additive manufacturing (AM) has increasingly gained importance in the last decades. Powder-based techniques are well-known because of their versatility, allowing high degrees of geometric complexity and a wide range of chemical compositions. It enables a myriad of alloys to be printed and, e.g., the production of parts with functional gradient given the possibility of tailoring the alloy composition by changing in situ the process parameters. Moreover, the processes have been constantly developed, leading to fast, reproducible, and ready-to-use net shape parts becoming powder-based AM economically attractive. The factors mentioned above attracted the attention of aerospace, biomedical, energy and others, being the focus of intense investigations in processing and related material processing phenomena; these led to the understanding of key phenomena and consequently to the improvement of AM as a production tool.